What’s a Browser Cookie?

What’s a Browser Cookie?

Browser Cookie(s) is a small piece of information for websites that stored on your system. They contain bits of text only! The text could be an user ID, session ID or any other text. Cookies are doing an important roll while browsing and if you disabled them then you'll find yourself unable to log into websites.
 

Web pages could be configurable through cookies, as the web page having a hide link, which hides certain elements of the page, then hiding elements are saved on your system as a cookie. When loading the same page in later times, the page will be examined by the cookie and the element will be concealed automatically. 

More over, if you deleted the cookies, you'll be logged out from the web site then the web site wouldn't remember the settings you've changed. So, cookies are very essential for our browsing and your system perhaps stored a hundred or thousands of cookies!

The cookies (for Firefox) are stored in Cookies window. To get Cookies Window, right click over on Firefox window then choose View Page Info.

The Page Info window will be opened, as pictured below. From Page Info's Security tab, click View Cookies button.

Now Cookies window will be opened, as pictured below. From this window, cookies could be removed, as for Selected or All.

Cookies are helpful to the user in several ways.

• They remember the status of log-in details and identifying the user.

• They stored preferences of the web site in order to load the web pages to the previous manner.

• They allow online shopping websites to keep and provide user's personalized contents, such as for the products the user browsed, to be remembered and recommending, too, for similar products or brands.

However, cookies also doing bad rolls of tracking such as spying the users activities across the web. Advertising and tracking networks are using scripts in order to trace the users profiles then setting them as cookies in the browser. 

When visiting a website, which uses scripts from adv network and tracking network as well, then both networks could set cookies on the browser. The aim of these networks, to setting up cookies on browser, are to collect and keep users info then using them to target the user's desire. 

Through Google Ads Preferences page, the user may able to view the adv categories, which assigned by Google based websites.  

Managing Cookies is simple; they could be managed from browser's setting window.  Browser's Clear Private Data tool will also remove cookies.
  

Keep in mind that some websites wouldn't work properly if you disabled cookies for them.